Murder for fun: Why did media fail to mention race of the suspects in initial reporting?

By
Jack Kelly

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Chris Lane, 22, was jogging along Country Club Road in Duncan, Okla., Aug. 18 when a car containing three teenagers pulled up behind him. He was shot in the back.

A native of Melbourne, Australia, Chris Lane was attending East Central University in Ada, Okla., on a baseball scholarship. He was in Duncan to visit his girlfriend of four years, Sarah Harper.

"Chris was the kind of guy you want your sons to grow up to be and that you want your daughters to marry," said Sam Malchar, a former classmate.

"He was such an amazing person," Ms. Harper said. "I'm going to miss him forever."

His murderers didn't know Chris Lane. The first time James Edwards, 15, Chancey "Baby Drake" Luna, 16, and Michael Jones, 17, saw him was when he jogged past the house where they were staying, according to a statement Mr. Jones gave police. They got in their car and followed him.

"We were bored and decided to kill somebody," Mr. Jones said. He drove the car, "Baby Drake" was the shooter, he said. Mr. Edwards and Mr. Luna have been charged with first-degree murder.

One murder wasn't enough, apparently, to alleviate their boredom. They may have been planning another when police spotted their black Ford Focus in a church parking lot.

The police acted on a tip from James Johnson, 52. "My son called me and said, 'They're saying they're coming to kill me,' so I called the police and they got here within about three minutes," Mr. Johnson told the Herald Sun, an Australian newspaper. "I think they were on a killing spree," Duncan police chief Dan Ford told the Australian Associated Press. "We would have had more bodies that night if we didn't get them."

The cold-blooded murder of Chris Lane, a white man, was big news in Australia and Britain. But from the national news media here, it has drawn nowhere near the attention devoted to the shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin. The Associated Press and the broadcast networks did not mention the race of the suspects -- the two charged with murder, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Luna, are black; Mr. Jones, charged as a accessory, is white.

It's about seven times more likely that a black person will murder a white person than vice versa, FBI statistics indicate. But emphasizing interracial violence obscures the bigger story. Blacks are somewhat more likely to be victims than perpetrators, because most violent crime isn't interracial. More than 90 percent of black murder victims are murdered by other blacks.

About 8,000 blacks were murdered each year between 1993 and 2005, according to a 2007 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. About 1,300 more blacks are murdered each year than the total number of Americans killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 on.

Blacks comprise about 13 percent of the population. In 2011, 38.3 percent of those arrested for violent crimes and 49.7 percent of those arrested for murder were black.

The epidemic of violence among blacks distorts U.S. crime statistics. In 2011 there were 4.7 murders per 100,000 Americans. But the murder rate among non-blacks was just 2.6 per 100,000 -- comparable to the rates in most of Europe.

Most black murder victims -- and black murderers -- are young males. Young black men commit murder 14 times more often than do young white men. Most killing is done in cities. In suburban and rural areas, murder rates are comparable to those in Europe.

The epidemic of black-on-black violence is fostered by the disintegration of the black family -- more than 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock -- and by a gang and hip-hop culture which glorifies violence.

James Edwards and Chancey Luna are members of the Crips, a predominantly black street gang, James Johnson told the Herald Sun. They threatened to kill his son, Christopher, 17, because he wouldn't join the gang. They're "troublemakers" and "bullies" who had "no parental supervision," he said.

The murder suspects flashed gang signs and posed with guns and wads of cash in photos on their Facebook pages.

Chris Lane's murder demonstrates the need for more gun-control laws, said CNN talk show host Piers Morgan. But most guns used in crimes are obtained from friends and relatives, or stolen. Cities like Chicago where murder rates are high have strict gun control laws.

Better enforcement of existing law is more likely to reduce gun crime. During the Obama administration, prosecutions for violation of federal gun laws have fallen nearly a third. Someone should ask the president why.

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